At one end, expansives. Expansives like moderation, pacing, a little time for everything and everything in its place. Expansives like to plan, chart, graph, assess, and know what’s coming. Expansives are reliable.

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At the other end, intensives. Intensives go full-bore, all-in or all-out, work like hell and rest like the dead. Intensives might like organization, but then they REALLY like organization. They tend to be more tolerant of both chaos and risk. Intensives get wild ideas and make them work. Except, of course, when they fail spectacularly.

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Leela writes, speaks, and coaches as an intensive doing this work for and about intensives. For companies, she helps leaders understand the framework and its impact on hiring, job design, and management internally, and marketing and public presence externally, so they can evaluate and establish policies, systems, and branding consistent with the needs of the company. For leaders: If you’re an intensive, it’s probably your biggest gift and she can help you use it; if you’re an expansive, she can help you work with, design for, and understand the intensives around you while supporting your expansiveness.

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FAQ:

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So is intensiveness better than expansiveness?

No! We need both. It’s just that the culture is mostly designed to support and require expansiveness, so learning about intensiveness creates understanding, balance, and efficiency while reducing stress.

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Is it like introverts and extroverts?

Not really. You can be someone who recharges from solitude and still go full-bore into everything you do.

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Is it like Type A and Type B?

Not as much as you’d think. Where Type A likes planning, Intensives are generally very chaos-tolerant. Where Type A tends toward convention, Intensives prefer unique and out-of-the-box answers.

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Is it like bipolar disorder, ADHD, anxiety, depression?

No, this is not a diagnosable condition, and it is not a pathology. It only interferes with normal function in the same way that left handed people who tried to be right handed had problems; once you know you’re left handed, your function is not impeded, and in fact intensiveness can be a real advantage. Intensiveness does not necessarily come with depression or any other mental health issue, and should not be confused with, or substituted for, any mental health condition or diagnosis. Mx Sinha is not a doctor and nothing herein or in any related material is intended to diagnose, treat, address, or cure any disease. Like any other way of being, it does sometimes co-occur with diagnosable conditions, but that does not indicate correlation or causality.

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Shouldn’t intensives just calm down and grow up? Isn’t it more mature to act moderately/expansively?

No, in fact intensives’ best qualities and most helpful moments get buried in attempts to act expansive. There’s nothing immature about intensiveness.

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What do you mean, there’s nothing immature about it? It sounds like a laundry list of immaturity and unprofessionalism.

That’s a bias that has been built into US and Canadian and other cultures with heavy 17-19th century British influence since, well, the 17th century. There is a marked difference between immaturity and enthusiasm, for example. Much of the energy that drives modern tech culture is actually intensiveness which is being accepted because it’s showing up in young white men. That same intensiveness exhibited in women/feminine-of-center folks and people of color/indigenous people is considered immature and unprofessional. Until the tech revolution, even young white men couldn’t get away with being intensive. Intensiveness is not a dominant cultural trait here, but it is just as professional and adult—and leaderly—as expansiveness. The intercultural and race-related implications are deep and potentially transformative.

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So what if I’m an expansive?

Then you’re both lucky and in the majority—the cultural soup we swim in was build for you. But you’ve probably got at least one intensive in your life who frustrates and irritates you, even if you respect and appreciate them for who they are, believe they’re talented, and enjoy working (or spending time with) them. If you’re an employer or business leader you probably know more than one. Understanding this framework will help you understand them—what makes them tick, what works best and worst for them, what they value, and how to get to a win-win when negotiating with them.

Mx Sinha has a BA and an MDiv, and is a community minister ordained in the Unitarian Universalist tradition. She also has training and experience in coaching (CTI), bodywork, technical theater, woodworking, and IT. They are all surprisingly relevant.